It’s not often my cows and global corporations cry together, but then it’s weaning time. Seis has been fed by her mother, Cinco, for so long, she has no idea what it’s like to go out and get food for herself every day, and by the sound of her voice, I’d say she thinks it’s [...]
Rule of thumb: When things appear to be going perfectly, you are probably missing something. My advice is duck and cover because it’s just about to hit you. I woke up this morning with the same smug buzz I wrote about yesterday — opened all the doors and windows, meditated, breathed deeply in the sun, [...]
I harvested the last of the asparagus in my former vegetable garden before I turned the cows into the south pasture for the second time this season. It has been a three week streak of me doing farm work in every available hour, and I am feeling smug about my accomplishments. So many seasons past I [...]
These photos are a few weeks old, but I wanted to post one last look at the ruminants in their wooly winter coats. They’ve been on grass for a week. The first grass since November. Already they are gaining weight and slicking out, shedding their teddy bear fur. Now the pressure is on to mend [...]
I am trying to go with the flow. I thought it would improve my technique to know the origin of the phrase. According to UrbanDictionary.com “go with the flow” was first known to be used by Marcus Aurelius who ruled the Roman Empire from 161 to 180. I remember my Grandma Best, a lifetime school [...]
These photos appear in consecutive order, all taken within a half hour at dusk this evening. The difference in lighting is the camera flash on or off. That brilliant orb in the sky is the moon rising in the east. Tomorrow is the official full moon, 7,000 km closer to the Earth than in the [...]
It is still deep winter on the farm. A few feet of snow surround the house and it’s raining sideways this morning coating my world with ice. It’s raining inside, too. The collar around the wood stove chimney is dripping noisily on the heat shield and the floor. I have the whole area wrapped in [...]
A report this week from the Disassociated Press reveals government and industry consternation at the public outcry over tomatoes bio-engineered to thrive on animal and human urine. One lobbyist said, “All these years we’ve been bio-engineering vegetables to thrive on poisons that pollute the water and soil and may cause cancer, and the public has [...]
After a couple more blizzards, rain on snow, a sand storm of sleet, and an accumulation of three feet of snow with a hard ice crust — the charm in my last blog post is completely gone. There will be no photographs of my lovely farm here today. I don’t want to confuse beauty with [...]
A snow storm from the midwest and a rain storm from the Atlantic collided over the farm during the night, and this morning it’s a complete white out. There was no sunrise, just a cross-fade from black to murky grey to silent white. I started morning chores early because the cows and the goats were [...]